To the point: Errors excepted
And once again, someone is heralding the end of the classic newspaper. This someone seems to know it very well: In the U.S., the end of the daily newspaper will come as early as 2017.
In 2019, the UK and Iceland will follow, and in 2020, newspapers in Canada and Norway will die. In 2021, Finland, Singapore and Greenland will be affected. And so the dance of death continues in one-year steps until the death knell rings in the Argentinean pampas in 2039. By the way, Switzerland will be hit in 2025 together with Poland and Sweden.
Are these some pipe dreams of a prophet? Far from it! The Australian media expert Ross Dawson has backed up the whole thing strictly scientifically. Countless key factors are said to contribute to the demise. They are to be read up under www.futureexploration.net. One can justify any theory, no matter how abstruse, the only question is how accurate the statements are. Cautious as the Aussi researcher is, he notes laconically in the small print "This schedule for newspaper extinction shows best estimates given current trends". Which could be translated as "errors excepted.
Should we now smile at these abstruse prophecies of doom? That would certainly be wrong, because it is very much the right thing to do to ask ourselves about the future of the daily newspaper. The daily newspaper will certainly not look the same in twenty years as it does today. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung also looked different in 1780 and carried different content than it does today. That's probably clear.
What is wrong and bad about the whole thing is the simplification of an existing problem. The fact that the simplification is dressed up scientifically does not make the whole better. It will not take long until whole hosts of Nostradamus adepts parrot the realizations obediently.
It's a mystery to me why the media industry doesn't ignore any possibility of prophesying its own demise. With masochistic pleasure, they are working valiantly on their self-destruction. I don't want to be misunderstood: God knows I'm not in favor of talking everything up; there are still many problems to be solved at the newspapers. Newspapers have to change, as they have always changed, but talking everything into the ground doesn't help at all.
This is not just about the effect of the "self-fulfilling prophecy", a prophecy that comes true because you unconsciously behave in such a way that it must come true. It is about the fact that you have to believe in your own products in order to be able to sell them credibly and convincingly.
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]
Are these some pipe dreams of a prophet? Far from it! The Australian media expert Ross Dawson has backed up the whole thing strictly scientifically. Countless key factors are said to contribute to the demise. They are to be read up under www.futureexploration.net. One can justify any theory, no matter how abstruse, the only question is how accurate the statements are. Cautious as the Aussi researcher is, he notes laconically in the small print "This schedule for newspaper extinction shows best estimates given current trends". Which could be translated as "errors excepted.
Should we now smile at these abstruse prophecies of doom? That would certainly be wrong, because it is very much the right thing to do to ask ourselves about the future of the daily newspaper. The daily newspaper will certainly not look the same in twenty years as it does today. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung also looked different in 1780 and carried different content than it does today. That's probably clear.
What is wrong and bad about the whole thing is the simplification of an existing problem. The fact that the simplification is dressed up scientifically does not make the whole better. It will not take long until whole hosts of Nostradamus adepts parrot the realizations obediently.
It's a mystery to me why the media industry doesn't ignore any possibility of prophesying its own demise. With masochistic pleasure, they are working valiantly on their self-destruction. I don't want to be misunderstood: God knows I'm not in favor of talking everything up; there are still many problems to be solved at the newspapers. Newspapers have to change, as they have always changed, but talking everything into the ground doesn't help at all.
This is not just about the effect of the "self-fulfilling prophecy", a prophecy that comes true because you unconsciously behave in such a way that it must come true. It is about the fact that you have to believe in your own products in order to be able to sell them credibly and convincingly.
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]
